Professional Detachment (or Bedside Manner)
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: Three doctor's examinations, two would-be lovebirds, and one long bit o' fluff. (Rated Teen for suggestive themes; find the Adult/Mature version on AO3, Tumblr, or Teaspoon.)
1. Part 1: Observation

She feels fine. Really, she does.

"I don't get what all the fuss is about," Rose protests for the hundredth time (or, perhaps more accurately, the fourth time) as the Doctor ushers her into the TARDIS' medical bay. "I'm not sick!"

"I didn't say 'sick'. I said 'poisoned,'" the Doctor replies absentmindedly. He darts over to the supply cabinets and pulls the doors open one by one, prattling at the top of his lungs. "Big difference, sick, poisoned. 'Sick' means you could have a virus or an infection or a disease or any other number of fun physical ailments. 'Poisoned,' on the other hand, suggests you ingested or touched or otherwise absorbed something you shouldn't have."

He shoots a look over his shoulder. "Sound familiar?"

Rose fidgets under his glare, scuffing her shoe against the pristine white floor. The toe of her trainers leaves a dark smudge behind. "The Glavonian bloke said it was safe."

"Oh, are we just trusting every Glavonian bloke and Slitheen snake-oil salesman we encounter now?" the Doctor asks, exasperated.

"Dunno. He seemed all right."

Rose can practically hear him rolling his eyes at her. "'Seemed all right.' Seemed a bit pretty, more like," the Doctor mutters under his breath.

He rifles through the supply cabinets, pots and packets and syringes ruffled by busy hands and falling to the floor like an bizarre assortment of rainbow-colored autumn leaves. Rose leans against the wall and chews on a fingernail while he searches.

"So what's gonna happen to me?" she asks after a moment. "You know. If I've been poisoned."

"The symptoms or the whole death bit?"

Rose shrugs. "All of it, I guess?"

The Doctor abandons his search in the cabinets and starts pulling out drawers. "Symptoms include dry mouth, blurred vision, sensitivity to light, dilated pupils, confusion, tachycardia, hallucinations, and headache. Mode of death is poisoning by a form of atropine, not unlike that found in belladonna. Deadly nightshade," he explains before Rose can ask.

"Ah," she says in response. She has no clue what belladonna is, or deadly nightshade for that matter, and she's not about to ask—she only brings up herbology questions if she needs something to lull her to sleep.

"Atropine mucks about with your parasympathetic nervous system—a-ha! There it is—" and here he emerges victorious with a vial of blue liquid clutched in his hand—"and basically destroys your body's ability to self-regulate all the stuff that should be running on automatic."

"Like my breathing and my heartbeat," Rose supplies.

"Very good!" the Doctor beams at her. Then he considers. "Well, no. Very bad. Very very bad, actually. Which is why," he says, pointing to the exam table and fixing her with a glare, "you should have stayed away. Like I told you to."

"I think you're just jealous," Rose says sullenly, hoisting herself on to the exam table. Paper crackles and faux leather creaks under her weight.

The Doctor retrieves his stethoscope from the counter and drapes it around his neck. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, cos I listened to someone who isn't you. And he _was_ pretty."

"Mmm," he says, in much the same way someone might say it if they absolutely were not paying attention to a word you were saying. He throws some things haphazardly onto a tray—a box of medical latex gloves, the vial of antidote, a syringe fresh in its packet, a roll of medical tape, some antiseptic wipes and clean cotton balls—and brings it all over to Rose, setting the tray on the table beside her.

"Finally. A professional," Rose teases.

"Indeed. Now," he says as he fishes out a pair of gloves and pulls them on with a sharp _snap_ , "If you'd be so kind as to remove your jacket, Miss Tyler."

Rose complies, unzipping her jacket and setting it aside. She shivers in her thin tee. "Whatever you say, doctor-Doctor."

He smiles at that but he hasn't got much attention to spare for her at the moment, busying himself with an antiseptic pouch. He tears the packet and a sharp smell punctures the air, the stringent scent of something aggressively clean. The Doctor grasps Rose by the wrist, pulls her arm out flat and swabs at the soft inside of her arm, cleaning it. Rose tries not to squirm with ticklishness. She can only guess he's going to give her a shot there.

"Erm, Doctor?" Rose asks, hesitating.

"Mm?"

"Is that gonna mess me up or anything? Like if I wasn't poisoned after all? I mean, I only smelled the flower, it isn't like I touched it or ate it or anything. And I really don't feel sick."

"Not 'sick.' 'Poisoned,'" he reminds her. "And no, you shouldn't suffer any adverse side effects from the antidote, whether you're poisoned or not. This is just a precautionary measure. Stuff's harmless on its own."

He removes the syringe from its packet and sticks it into the antidote vial, slowly drawing out several milliliters of blue fluid. The stuff reminds Rose of mouthwash.

"Haven't you got something besides needles?" Rose asks, eying the syringe uncertainly. She can't tell if she's just being a scaredy-cat, or if the needle is actually as ten-times-bigger-than-normal as it seems. Her legs jitter nervously, heels thumping against the table. "I thought your medical equipment was supposed to be all advanced and superior or whatever."

"Not for something like this. Straight into the bloodstream's the best way to go."

He holds her forearm still, placing the tip of the needle against her skin. Rose looks away. She stifles a laugh. All the things she's seen and done, and she still can't handle getting a shot.

She winces when the needle passes through her flesh, biting into her with a pinch that she can feel in her teeth. Her arm tenses with the pain and her hand curls up into a fist, fingernails digging into her palm. The shot seems to drag on forever—how much antidote does she need, anyway?

"You all right?" the Doctor asks, concerned.

Rose nods. She tries not to think about the piece of metal jabbing into her arm and focuses on other things instead. The buzzing of the lights overhead. The smell of the antiseptic wipe. The feel of the Doctor's fingers around her wrist, thumb rubbing over the sensitive skin there.

It's very distracting. Rose can't decide if that's a good thing or not.

Is he even aware that he's doing that right now?

"There," the Doctor says, pulling the needle away. He presses a cotton ball to the inside of her arm, dabbing at the tiny droplets of blood that well up in protest. He tapes the cotton flat against her arm and he pushes her hand upward, wedging the makeshift bandage firmly in place. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

His fingers are threaded through hers.

"Do I get a lolly?" Rose asks.

The Doctor grins at her and leans forward. "Only if you're very good." He plants a quick kiss on her knuckles.

Rose laughs. "What's gotten into you?"

"Who, me?" he asks innocently. "Absolutely nothing! Well, a biscuit earlier, and maybe an ice cream, but I can hardly be blamed for that."

He bounds across the room and pops open a biohazard waste bin with his toe, peeling off his gloves and tossing them in with a flourish. "Anyway, can't a fellow just be glad his companion is all right?" he calls back to her. "Or going to be all right, anyway? Hopefully?"

Rose isn't fooled. His text may be full of gibberish half the time, but she still can read between the lines. Her eyes narrow in suspicion, tracking him as he walks back toward her.

"Are you worried right now?" she wonders aloud.

"Of course I'm worried." The Doctor's voice is casual, perfectly conversational, even, as he slips his spectacles out of his breast-pocket and slides them on.

"I'm sorry."

"You should be," he says, stepping closer to her. Close enough that her knees are very nearly brushing against his suit jacket. "Companions don't exactly grow on trees—well, except in the places where they do—and I'm not really keen on replacing you any time soon. Bit of a bother, having to break you lot in all over again. So many _questions_."

His hands reach out to feel around her neck, under her jaw. His fingers are cool on her throat. Rose tries not to swallow too hard at such a personal touch; she can only imagine how embarrassed she would feel if he picked up on her ridiculous physical tells. He's already standing so close, and his attention is focused so intently on her, and really, this isn't doing anything to help her resolution not to think about him _like that_ , especially since she knows for a fact that he's more worried than he's letting on.

She silently chides herself. He's probably had a hundred dozy human girls trailing after him with puppy-dog eyes. He's probably sick of it.

(Rose can't blame them, though; especially wouldn't be able to blame anyone who pined after him in this regeneration.)

The Doctor frowns. He prods his index and middle finger firmly against her pulse point. He looks down at his watch.

"Odd," he says quietly.

"What?"

"Well, the effects of the antidote are supposed to be instantaneous, but it doesn't seem to be calming your heartrate. In fact—it almost seems to be _elevating_ it."

"Huh," Rose says. She imagines she should feel worried about that right now, but the fact is, she feels fine. Well, maybe just a little lightheaded from the proximity of a certain fit Time Lord who has a bad habit of stroking her wrist and kissing her hand and unnecessarily grabbing her about the waist at times, but other than that, she can't complain.

"And you're a little bit flushed," the Doctor continues, looking her over. "Pink in the cheeks, the neck, and along the chest." He pulls up his sleeve and presses the inside of his wrist to her forehead. "Do you feel feverish?"

Rose shakes her head, or tries to with his arm in the way.

"38.1 degrees Celsius, just a smidge higher than average, probably nothing to be concerned about," the Doctor announces, drawing his arm back. But he doesn't seem satisfied by this. He worries his tongue between his teeth. "Still."

He removes the stethoscope from its perch around his shoulders, plugs the ends in his ears. "Better safe than sorry," he offers by way of explanation. "Let's give the lungs a check, shall we? Make sure that parasynthesis is working at full capacity."

"I think it's fine?" Rose half-says, half-asks. She feels like she's breathing just fine, but he seems so sure something is wrong, it's easy for her to second-guess herself.

"Let's make completely sure," the Doctor replies. He rubs the end of the stethoscope on his sleeve, warming it up. Strangely courteous of him, Rose thinks. "Again, better safe than not-safe."

He starts to move toward her, hesitates, stops. His hands freeze in midair. "Is it all right—I mean—it really would be—"

The Doctor casts about for the right set of words. "Auscultation works best if there's no interference with the instrument."

Rose raises an eyebrow in query.

The Doctor fidgets, bouncing on his heels just the smallest bit. "I'll get the clearest reading without the shirt in the way."

"Oh," Rose replies softly, and tries not to blush even worse than she already is.

"I mean, I can—I'll put the gloves back on, or something, if that would make you more comfortable," the Doctor rushes, but his words grind to a halt as Rose lifts her arms and pulls her shirt over her head. The Doctor's eyes widen in surprise.

"What?" Rose asks.

"Erm, nothing, just—"

He keeps his gaze firmly fixed on her face. "I was just going to, you know. Go _under_ your shirt."

Embarrassment thunders through her. "Ah. Should I—?"

"No, no, it's fine," he assures her. "Honestly, probably preferable. Least probability of static interference."

He gestures awkwardly. "Shall I?"

"Sure. Have at it. Get up in there, or whatever."

"Right," the Doctor says quickly. "Here we go."

"Allons-y?" Rose supplies.

He grins at her. "Allons-y."

His grin melts away, though, when he steps closer, playfulness and smiles replaced with businesslike movement and a professional facade. His fingers brush her collarbone, and she wonders, a little bit, if maybe she has been poisoned after all, because her heart rate is increasing again. She can feel it pounding in her ears.

"All right, Rose," the Doctor says. "Just try to breathe normally."

She doesn't know how she's supposed to do that when he's so close, and, oh yeah, there's the little detail of _she's sitting there with no shirt on_ , but she does her best, forcing air in and out of her lungs at a measured pace. He presses the end of the stethoscope against her chest, almost at her throat; first one side, then another. Rose watches him as he listens, trying to see if she can suss out what he's thinking, but his face is unreadable. He moves lower, pausing on each side, and Rose thinks this is the quietest she's ever seen him.

He frowns and shifts a little closer to her and god, he smells good. Normally Rose doesn't notice it—if he wears any kind of scent, or has any naturally, she usually can't tell, it's either incredibly subtle or she just has a really bum sense of smell—but it's impossible not to notice when he's standing so close. Close enough that she can't really look him in the eyes anymore without straining her neck upward a little bit. She settles for looking at his jacket lapel instead, at a tiny pick in the fabric there.

 _Fall smell_ , she thinks. _Crisp air. Like winter is about to hit_. She notices it when she breathes in. She resolves to breathe through her mouth.

Rose feels like she's doing pretty well with her controlled breathing until he slides the stethoscope down even further. He's touching her in the most sanitized, clinical, and unromantic way possible—but of course, she realizes, her stupid body doesn't know that. All it knows is that the Doctor is touching her, and her body likes that. Quite a bit, actually.

"See, now, that's troublesome," the Doctor mutters. "Heartrate is picking up again and breathing is irregular. Why isn't the antidote working yet?"

Rose freezes. Oh, no. He's going to figure it out any second. There's nothing wrong with her. Nothing at all, except that her treacherous body is going to give her away.

He slides the stethoscope even a little bit lower. "Or perhaps—"

Rose grabs his hand before it can move any further. "You know what? I actually am feeling a bit feverish. Think you could grab me a paracetamol?"

The Doctor doesn't respond to her query, but instead, when his eyes meet hers, his mouth falls open. Quick as a flash, he's got his fingers wrapped round Rose's chin.

"Your pupils are dilated," he murmurs, brow furrowed.

Rose's breath stalls in her throat. Has he figured her out?

He lets out a frustrated sigh. "That's classic atropine poisoning, Rose."

He steps back and runs a hand through his hair. His eyes dart about the room madly. "Why isn't the antidote working?" he asks again.

"No, Doctor, please," Rose pleads. "I promise you, I'm all right—"

"Did you come into contact with any other foreign elements or compounds while we were on Glavon?"

Rose shrugs. "Maybe?" she offers weakly.

The Doctor starts to pace. "No, no, that isn't it either. We were only planetside for a day. And all of your symptoms match atropine poisoning exactly. And you've been inoculated against anything we should encounter on our travels. Well, except for Toadswallop, but I'm not half-convinced that it isn't real anyway. Bloody seventy-third century pharmaceutical companies."

"Doctor—"

"No, Rose, it's all right," the Doctor mutters distractedly, scratching the back of his neck. "I'll figure it out. We'll just have to run some tests, is all. But in the meantime we might have to put you in the cryo-chamber for a bit, just in case—"

She has no idea what a cryo-chamber is any more than she's familiar with belladonna, but Rose doesn't like the sound of it. "Doctor," she says impatiently.

"—or I suppose we could opt for a blood transfusion, I'll see what I've got in the bank, if there's any B-positive lying around—"

"Doctor," Rose almost shouts. She pushes off the table to join him. "I don't need a blood transfusion—really, I don't even want to know _how_ you know my blood type—and I don't need a chamber thing, and I don't need any special medicine or anything weird. Okay? I'm fine!"

The Doctor shakes his head. "No offense, Rose, but you aren't exactly a physician."

Rose has to try very hard not to insult him under her breath. "No offense, but I'm not exactly poisoned, either."

"Ah, then have you come up with a satisfactory alternative explanation for your symptoms?" the Doctor asks, crossing his arms. Daring her to challenge him.

"Look, I know my body, all right?" she tries. "This is all normal, human stuff. It's nothing dramatic. Can't you just trust me?"


	2. Part 2: Diagnosis

Whether or not he trusts her isn't the question.

The Doctor scowls at Rose. Rose doesn't back down. A brief struggle-of-wills ensues. It is most certainly closer to a glaring contest than a staring one.

"Fine," he says after a moment, stepping back. Hands throw up in a gesture of surrender.

"Really?"

"Yes. Fine. You know your body. I trust your opinion."

Rose exhales in relief. Tension melts from her shoulders. "Thank you."

She retreats to the exam table, to grab her shirt. She pulls it on over her head, and reaches for her jacket too.

"So are we done on Glavon, or—"

Whatever Rose wants to know about _Glavon, or_ , the Doctor never finds out; within seconds he's crossed the room, whipped out the sonic, and grabbed her by the arm. She lets out a sharp _Hey!_ in protest and pulls away from him, but he stops her easily, fingers wrapping around her forearm hard enough to hold, but not hard enough to hurt. He rips off the cotton ball nestled in the inside of her elbow and flips the sonic to the setting he needs, reading the droplets of blood drying on the bandage.

(Medical scan—why didn't he think of it earlier?)

"What the hell?" Rose demands, jerking back.

"A-HA!" the Doctor announces, triumphant. He wags the sonic in Rose's face. "You, Rose Tyler, are very much not all right. Your neurochemicals are misfiring wildly!"

"You said you trusted me," Rose accuses, pulling on her jacket and drawing it close like a protective shield.

"I said I trusted your opinion, but since your brain is clearly impaired, it isn't really your genuine opinion, is it? I mean, look at this—"

He smacks the sonic with his other hand. "Heightened production of dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, serotonin, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, testosterone…"

The Doctor trails off, frowning. Testosterone? He knows it's present in human females, but not generally at these levels, and certainly not in response to atropine exposure. And it makes no sense (at all, whatsoever) that she would be producing any of these other chemicals either—if he remembers his human biochemistry correctly, and of course he does, oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin are all the juices in a brain that's _happy_. In fact, he realizes, human bodies typically only release this cocktail in this quantity under a very, very specific set of conditions, and…

…and…

…and he kissed her hand, and she took off her shirt, and he did just technically explore quite a bit of her northern territory.

"Ah," he says, nonplussed. He removes his spectacles and deposits them in his suit-pocket without looking. He swallows. Loudly. "That's…not at all what I expected."

The two of them stand in silence; if there were crickets in the room, they'd be deafening right now.

(If he's being honest with himself, he can't really be surprised at any of this; this regeneration is a dreadful flirt, especially with Rose, and he's caught her looking at him more than once—he just never gave it too terribly much thought because, well, she's a dreadful flirt too, isn't she? Never mind the age-and-species gap. No point in getting his hopes up—not that he'd admit, even under pain of torture, to ever having such hopes.)

(It's possible she's caught him looking at her more than once as well.)

"Yeah, well," Rose laughs after a moment. "I guess you found me out. Me and my pretty-boy aliens, eh? What are you gonna do?"

The Doctor quirks an eyebrow at her. "I beg your pardon?"

Rose smiles and plays with her necklace, twirling the charm on the chain round and round and round; now that the initial moment has passed, she seems more at ease. "You know. Alien pretty-boys. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, can't drag 'em back to the TARDIS to satisfy your physical needs." She shrugs. "You said it yourself, me and my pretty boys!"

The Doctor's still stuck on one point. "Why can't you drag me back to the TARDIS?" he asks. "Is something preventing you physically?"

Rose stops playing with her necklace. Now she's really staring at him.

"Or," the Doctor says, as realization dawns like a cloudy grey morning, "Or, you're actually talking about someone else entirely. Like the bloke back on Glavon. Who tried to give you that flower and started this whole mess in the first place."

Of course; he's daft; of course this isn't about him.

He feels very stupid all of a sudden.

"I mean, that makes sense, right?" Rose asks.

"Yes, yes, it does." Why does he feel almost…disappointed?

"Like, I meet the bloke, then you pull me away—erm, because you thought I'd been poisoned, and that was—good job, that. Cos if I had been poisoned, that would have been a good thing to do—but it—it didn't really give me a chance to. You know," Rose rambles a bit. She casts about the medical bay like something in the room will give her inspiration for her next few words.

"Take care of things," she ends up saying.

"Right," the Doctor says. He has a feeling he knows exactly what she means by _take care of things_ , and, rather bizarrely, he's a bit insulted that such an event would have been precipitated by an encounter with some random fellow, some complete stranger, when there are clearly other far-superior candidates about and around.

(Isn't he pretty enough?)

"So, you kind of get it now? Why I couldn't just tell you what was going on?" Rose asks. "It was sort of embarrassing."

"Why would it be? Nothing to be ashamed of, it's all perfectly natural," the Doctor counters, rubbing the back of his neck. "Besides, it isn't as if you can choose how you feel about something."

"Or someone?" Rose continues. She's blinking just a little more than usual as she looks at him, eyelashes fluttering like a nervous bird's wings.

"Or someone," the Doctor agrees. "An alien pretty-boy someone," he adds under his breath.

Rose grins up at him, trapping her tongue between her teeth, her usual confidence creeping back in now that the danger of vulnerability has passed. "You know," she says, "if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were maybe a little bit jealous after all."

"There's that presumption of yours again. Frankly, I don't know where it comes from."

"Not even a little?"

"Not even a little."

"Even though alien pretty-boy's presence had such a profound and lasting effect on me?" Rose teases, over-dramatizing the last few words.

"Nope," the Doctor lies.

Rose nods. "Good. Glad that's sorted."

Is he going mad, or is she the one who looks a bit disappointed now?

"All right, then," Rose says, clapping her hands together. "Now that that's done and over with, where are we off to next?" She pushes past him, toward the door. "Medieval times? Thirty-eighth century Neptune?" She spins around and issues him a saucy grin. "That Vhigian crystal palace you're always blathering on about?"

The Doctor watches her with mounting suspicion. Isn't the blathering usually his job?

"Are the pools really full of liquid crystals, or are they just bubbly?" Rose prattles, reaching behind her for the button that will open the medical bay doors. "Cos I don't really fancy swimming in dodgy pool water—I can do that back on the Estate, thanks."

The Doctor has to work to hide his grin. She's spent too much time around him, he thinks. She's picking up on his habits. Specifically, she's picked up on his habit of distraction. And the more she talks, the more he figures things out.

He's not the only liar here.

"So?" Rose ventures. She points to the door. "Are we gonna go, or…?"

"Actually, Rose," the Doctor says, "I'm not entirely unconvinced that something isn't wrong with you."

"Really?"

"Really. Because you mentioned that your—what did you call him? Your 'alien pretty-boy'?—had a lasting effect on you," he recites, slowly strolling toward her, "but the fact of the matter is, you didn't start exhibiting any symptoms until we got into this room."

Rose worries her bottom lip between her teeth. "Oh?"

"Oh yes," the Doctor replies softly. "And, as your doctor, it would be irresponsible of me to let you go without exploring every avenue of possibility. I'd be neglecting my duty as a professional."

He's standing very close to her now. "What if it turns out you're reacting to something else entirely?"

"I'm not." (He knows she's lying now; she twists her hands together when she lies, and right now, they may as well be tied in a bow.)

"Then you won't have anything to worry about, will you? Unless you know something you're not telling me."

Rose taps her foot impatiently. She heaves an impatient sigh, air exiting loudly through her nostrils. "Fine," she says.

The Doctor smiles at her. It's a smug smile, and they both know it.

"Fine," Rose says again, sharper this time. And then she starts unzipping her jacket.

The Doctor's smile fades away. "What are you—?"

"Might as well make it an official appointment, right?" Rose asks. She peels off her jacket and tosses it to the floor. She toes off her shoes as well.

"Have you got any paper gowns or anything?" she continues, grabbing her shirt by the hem and dragging it over her head once again. "Seems like a professional should have that sort of thing—or shall I sit in my unmentionables?"

"That isn't necessary," the Doctor tells her, careful not to look anywhere but her face—not that he minds, really, that she's stripping in front of him, only he doesn't want to be rude.

(Well, that isn't exactly true either, he does want to be rude, very rude, but this isn't about him, this is about her. Her, lying to him, and him catching her in it.

It's got absolutely nothing to do with the warmth he's feeling under his collar right now.)

"Oh no, it's totally necessary," Rose argues; the sarcasm in her voice is impossible to miss. She's unzipping her jeans now. "Because what if there's something you missed? I could have symptoms that you didn't notice because I still had my clothes on." Hips shimmy and her trousers fall to the floor, pooling around her ankles. "Like spots on my skin or something, or maybe a lump here or there. As you mentioned, it would irresponsible of you not to check.

"After all," she intones, kicking her jeans off to the side, "as a doctor, surely it doesn't bother you to see your patient's body. Does it?"

She's standing in the medical bay in nothing but her bra and a pair of pants. 'Bother' isn't exactly the word he'd use.

"Of course not," the Doctor says. "I am the very picture of professional detachment. Impeccable bedside manner."

"Good," Rose breathes.

"Great," he agrees.

"Fantastic!" Rose finishes.

Neither of them moves. Rose's chest rises and falls. The Doctor tries not to let his eyes be drawn by the movement.

Rose points to the exam table. "Shall we?"

She's calling his bluff, he knows. She thinks he'll become flustered and flabbergasted at the prospect of dealing with her in such personal circumstances, thinks he'll drum up an excuse to leave any moment now. It would have worked quite well with his ninth self. She is certainly committed to this bit, he'll give her that. But then again, so is he.

"Yes, let's!" he says, just a little too cheerful and a little too loud.

Rose blinks in surprise, but she doesn't argue. She heads back for the exam table (the Doctor tries to avert his eyes from her backside, but then again, this _is_ an examination, and that _is_ rather a fascinating mole on her left cheek), but when she turns around and places the heels of her palms on the table, preparing to hoist herself up, the Doctor stops her with his hands on her torso.

"Please, allow me," he says, thinking she'll surely blush and refuse.

She does neither. "Please, be my guest," she replies.

He's not going to lie; her flesh is warm and pleasantly pliant under his fingers. Warm and pleasant enough that after he lifts her onto the table, he can hardly be blamed if his hands linger, sliding from her ribcage down to her waist.

The Doctor drops his hands. This…might be a bit more than he bargained for, he realizes just a little too late.

"So?" Rose asks. Her fingertips beat out a rhythm on her thighs, the only outward sign of any nervousness she might be feeling right now. "What's next?"

"I imagine the first order of business would be to check on that core temperature."

"Excellent. Got a thermometer?"

"Don't need one."

The Doctor brushes her hair over her shoulder, her hair silky on his hand, his fingertips grazing her throat. He presses the back of his fingers against her neck, just under her jaw, where she sometimes dabs a bit of perfume in the mornings. He wonders if she knows that she's applying the perfume to a pulse point when she does that; that sometimes, just after a sprint away from danger, or when she's very close, her pulse sends her scent radiating out like a beacon. It's always very distracting. Much like it is now, lightly dusting the air with a smell vaguely reminiscent of apples and something quintessentially human and _her_.

He can feel her heating up under his touch; he doesn't know why he didn't notice the correlation before. 38.17 degrees, 38.2…

"Diagnosis?" she asks.

"Very warm," he tells her, "potentially feverish, but likely nothing to be too concerned about, on its own."

He withdraws his hand. "Now, your breathing, on the other hand—I can tell even from here that it's a bit irregular."

Rose's tongue darts out to wet her lips. "What do you mean, you can tell 'even from here'?"

"I mean I can hear your breaths leaving you at uneven intervals," the Doctor informs her. He picks up the stethoscope. "Also, I'm not blind," he mutters under his breath.

"What was that?"

"I'm going to need you to sit up straight, please," he says instead of answering her question, plugging in the stethoscope's eartips.

The Doctor presses the bell to her chest, just above the clavicle, and she jumps in surprise.

"Sorry," Rose laughs. Her voice reverberates in her chest, through the stethoscope. "It's cold."

"No, I'm sorry," the Doctor cringes. "I should have remembered. My mistake."

He listens to the rhythm of her breaths fading in and out, soft fuzzy noises leaving her chest and traveling through the tubing into his ears. He moves the bell lower, and lower still, smooth medal gliding over soft skin. Her breaths are becoming just a hair shallower, just a tic faster; he can feel the subtle shift in her sternum under his hand. He adjusts his hold on the bell and when his fingers ghost over her, he can just feel gooseflesh prickling beneath her skin. Her breaths increase from 24 to 30 per minute.

Alien pretty-boy, indeed. The Doctor may have regenerated relatively recently, but he wasn't born yesterday.

"And how are the lungs?" Rose inquires. She's avoiding his eyes, looking straight ahead instead.

"Perhaps a bit overexcited. But no inflammation in the pleura, so that's always a good sign." Really, if he was doing this properly, he'd have to keep going—6 anterior pairs, 7 posterior, according to his time with UNIT—but he rather feels that would disrupt this…this…whatever is happening right now.  
He shifts the bell down the sternal border, hovering over her tricuspid valve, just above the lacy edge of her bra.

The Doctor hears her heart rate increase, the gentle _thump-thump thump-thump_ speeding to a quiet crescendo. The Doctor is very glad their situations are not reversed and she can't hear his heartsbeat; he can generally regulate such things as he likes, but his heartsrate is pounding just a little harder than usual right now, almost like his system can hear hers and is responding in kind.

"I'm listening to your heart now," he explains. "Measuring rate, type, and pattern of sound."

Rose's gaze locks with his. Her eyes are going dark again, pupils widening by a fraction of a fraction that probably no one else would notice. "And?"

And it would take no effort, really, no effort at all, to just slip his fingers down, just a little bit. That would really get her heart rate going.

(And his.)

He hesitates.

What is he doing?

The Doctor has no idea where this is all going to lead—well no, actually, he has a pretty good idea, and that's just impossible. Not only is she human, and unthinkably younger than him, but she trusts him, and here he is, blatantly taking advantage of that trust. Pushing her to see how far she'll let him. Playing with her just to satisfy his own ridiculous ego. Something familiar wells up inside him, pressing inside his chest and his throat and making his stomach clench, and it takes him a moment to remember what it is—his old friend, guilt.

He can't do this. Not to Rose.

Besides—he's a Time Lord, not some low Gallifreyan who can't control his base animal instincts.

"Normal," he announces. He removes the bell from her chest and unplugs the eartips from his ears. "All normal."


	3. Part 3: Treatment

Rose's brow furrows in disbelief. "Really?"

"Really." He doesn't look at her as he stows his stethoscope away.

Rose's toes wriggle at the edge of his vision and her fingers twist in the paper beneath her. "Is everything all right? You've gone quiet all of a sudden."

"Everything's fine. You're all checked out. That's good, isn't it?"

"I guess so," Rose replies, but she can't help feeling a bit let down. The game had to end eventually, she knows, but now that they've gotten this far, she was sort of hoping it would have a different outcome.

(Is none of this affecting him at all? Not even a little bit?)

"Are you sure you don't need to check anything else?" she asks. "Like, reflexes or, or, joints or something? Or, I dunno, lumps?"

The Doctor chuckles quietly, a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes. "I'm sure you're fine, Rose."

He jerks his head toward her pile of clothes on the floor. "I'll just go get you your things, and then we can call it a day if you like. All right?"

He starts to walk away. Rose can feel the moment slipping away like water through her fingers.

"I thought you were a professional," she calls out before he's made it very far.

The Doctor stops. He's considering. "Are you implying that I'm not?" he asks over his shoulder.

"Just feels like I only got half an examination, is all. And I'd like to add," she says with a flip of her hair, "that I was very, very good, but no one ever gave me a lolly."

The Doctor rummages about in his pockets for a moment, and when he's spun back around, there's a red lollipop in his hand. He tosses it to her. Rose catches it without even looking, which is, in and of itself, a small miracle.

She starts unwrapping it, the plastic-wrap crinkling loudly in her hands. "And the other half of my examination?" she asks, popping the sweet into her mouth.

The Doctor tugs on one ear nervously. "You don't think it's a waste of time?"

"We're in a time machine, aren't we?"

"You didn't seem too keen on it earlier."

Rose removes the lolly with a _pop_. The Doctor's eyes are drawn to the motion. He wets his lower lip, and Rose wonders if he's thinking about the candy, or if he's thinking about her.

"I didn't think you'd find anything," she says, and she licks a line around the outside of her treat, filling her mouth with sugar-sweet that tastes less like fruit and more like red, "but maybe the third try's the charm?"

"Maybe I should just take you back to Glavon," the Doctor suggests, hands safely stowed in pockets as he walks back toward her. "I'm sure there's a bloke there who could give you all the attention you require."

Rose fidgets with the lolly. "I don't know if the alien pretty-boy feels the same way about me that I do about him. At least, not the specific one I'm interested in."

It's the boldest thing she's said thus far, hidden in an epithet that has, quite frankly, grown a little ridiculous. But it's the closest she's going to get to admitting her feelings right now.

At least until she knows he feels the same way.

"We're talking about medical attention, of course," the Doctor replies.

"Of course."

The Doctor rocks back and forth on his heels. "I suppose it wouldn't be the best practice to start sending patients away to other institutions," he concedes. "Good way to lose business, that. And what's a doctor without patients?"

Rose grins at him. "Seems a little sad, don't you think?"

He nods. "Still," he draws out, "As your physician, there are some things I've not discussed—withheld, as they were, for your own health and safety—and I'm not always good about discussing my methods as clearly as I should. This, as you know, flies directly in the face of informed consent."

Rose's pulse is thundering in her ears now. He may be an alien, but there's no way he's thick enough not to know what they're talking about, what they're both saying right now.

"I know what I'm getting into," she whispers.

He still won't look at her. "Do you?"

Rose drops her lollipop back in its plastic wrap and sets it down next to her on the table. She pulls the Doctor's hands out of his pockets; he doesn't try to stop her. She rests both palms gently on her hips. He is much cooler to the touch than she is.

"You can't choose how you feel about something, but you can decide what you do about it. And I hope you to decide," she tells him, "to finish my examination."

The Doctor doesn't say anything for a few seconds. He seems very distracted by the feel of his skin on hers.

"Well, then." His thumbs draw a circle around her hipbones. A slow, ticklish, torturous preview. "How could a good physician decline?"

Hands slip away and he's sliding his spectacles out of his pocket once again; it's a mask, Rose thinks, so he can play a part onstage and hide behind the curtain at the same time. The Doctor places his hands on her knees, gliding up, up, up toward her body, fingers dancing over muscle and fat and sinew. Probing and prodding in a not-unpleasant manner. His gaze follows the path drawn by his fingers.

"Musculature seems good," he says. "Taut and well-developed. Are you a runner, Miss Tyler?"

"On occasion," Rose replies. The feel of his hands on her bare skin is delicious.

The Doctor traces a path back down to her knees and pinches one of her legs just above the joint. Her calf tenses and her foot kicks out into the air and she stifles a giggle.

"Reflexes seem to be in working order," the Doctor proclaims. "Good response time."

He lifts her hand and, by extension, her arm, bending it gently at the elbow. With his other hand, Doctor grasps her by the upper arm, rotating it just a bit in its socket. He gives her hand a squeeze.

"Glenohumeral joint is operating as it should. Excellent movement from the teres minor."

He moves in closer; Rose has to part her legs to grant him room. The insides of her knees brush against his suit jacket. The fabric is rough and wooly against her skin and she can feel herself blushing again at his proximity.

The Doctor presses gently on her torso, in the soft expanse between her ribs, around her bellybutton, lower. His fingers just skim the area under her waistband. He isn't pressing as hard as a physician normally would; instead the pressure is soft, tentative, maddening.

"What are you doing now?" Rose asks.

"Well, you asked me to test your reflexes, and asked me to look at your joints, and I've done both," he responds. "Now, I'm filling your last request, and checking for lumps."

His hands slide back up her abdomen, resting on either side of her ribcage. "Just how thorough do you want this examination to be?" the Doctor asks her softly.

"Very," she replies.

He doesn't disappoint.

At first, his touches are purely clinical—he could almost be mistaken for the real deal. She forces herself not to squirm. But eventually, his exploration gives way to something more personal.

"Yes, erm," the Doctor stammers a bit, his spectacles sliding just a notch down his nose, "Involuntary responses to sensory stimuli are…satisfactory."

The whole situation has rendered her brain foggy and blank, but in the nicest possible way. Rose closes her eyes for a moment to just enjoy it, losing herself in the rush. When she opens her eyes again, the Doctor is watching her face; she would almost label his expression as _tender_.

"What else was on the list?" Rose asks breathlessly. "Of things to check for."

"I think we've officially run through it all, but I'm happy to make some things up, if you like."

Rose laughs, her happiness bubbling out in a shaky sound. "I guess it's just the—ah—the chemicals. The brain chemicals. Dopa-something and other stuff. Gotta check for those. Yeah?"

"Yes," the Doctor agrees. His hands stall.

Rose takes advantage of the moment to catch her breath. "What are you going to do about that?"

The Doctor leans in and kisses her.

* * *

A close-mouthed kiss is not a very good way to test someone's bodily fluids. But, the Doctor thinks, a close-mouthed kiss with Rose Tyler is light-years better than no kiss at all.

Rose's lips are soft and red and wonderfully tender, and sugary where the lollipop has passed through them. But the kiss breaks very quickly, so Rose can catch her breath. It's all right, the Doctor thinks; there will be more, if her heartrate is anything to go by.

"And, erm," Rose stutters. "What about that? Any results?"

"It was a very small sample," the Doctor replies. His voice has gone a bit husky. Just one of the many signs his body is sending his way, shouting at him to keep _going going going_ , all of his nerves and atoms straining toward her. "Not enough data to draw a reliable conclusion."

Rose nods. She taps his spectacles back up his nose. "Well, you have my permission to do it again. To collect more data, I mean."

"Good."

The word has barely left his mouth before he closes the gap between them and kisses her again, a little rougher this time. He tastes sucrose and glucose. Sugar and food coloring and artificial flavor. The lingering traces of a candy that's flavored like nothing but sweet. The Doctor parts his lips, deepening the kiss, but doesn't probe any further.

(But if his tongue just happens to swipe across his lips as the kiss ends, and it just happens to catch hers a little in the process—well, accidents happen, don't they?)

Rose pants lightly, her hands resting on his arms. Clutching him by the biceps. "What about now?" she asks.

"Welllll," he says, drawing the word out, "That was a better sample, admittedly, better period of exposure, but I'd really need to—"

He's being yanked down by the necktie, Rose bringing him in for a hard kiss. Her hands travel up to his head, fingers tangling in his hair. He wraps his arms about her waist. The Doctor chases after her greedily, cupping her face in his hand, all pretenses abandoned. Candy-traces and hormones and chemicals compete for his attention. It's all too much, too overwhelming, too slow.

"Dopamine," the Doctor breathes as he breaks away, trailing kisses down Rose's neck. "Oxytocin, norepinephrine, serotonin…"

He pulls back just enough so that he can look at Rose properly, framing her face in both hands. Rose watches him with wide eyes, well-kissed mouth pink and just a little bit open in surprise.

"Earlier, that last bit about the alien pretty-boy," the Doctor starts, because he's fairly sure he knows the answer, but he wants to hear it from her anyway, "That _was_ about me, right?"

Her face crinkles into a smile and another laugh bursts out of her. "Oh my god. Of course it was. It was always about you, you daft git!"

The Doctor grins. He's never been so glad to be called a daft git before.

He presses a quick, firm kiss to Rose's mouth before he shifts her off the table and, guiding her backward with his hands on her waist, pushes her against the nearest wall.

* * *

"I think this is the longest I've ever heard you go quiet," she jokes afterward, pushing damp strands of hair away from her cheeks. "Did I finally find a way to make you shut up?"

She can feel him grinning into the side of her face. "Oh, I rather think you were loud enough for the both of us, don't you?"

Rose feels herself go warm again.

* * *

Several minutes later, they've both cleaned up and located their respective discarded items of clothing—except for Rose's left sock, it seems to have disappeared somewhere, possibly been eaten by the same monster that inevitably claims all sock-mates and lip balms and clothes-hangers everywhere—and the Doctor is waiting for Rose to finish dressing. He stands with his back to her, polishing his glasses with a handkerchief fished out of his pockets, politely averting his gaze.

(Well, his eyes might wander once. Or twice. Or more. He can only be so polite; it is, after all, more in his nature to be rude.)

"And were you satisfied with the results of today's examination, Miss Tyler?" he asks once she's finished, fully clad in everything but her missing sock.

Rose considers. "I do feel better."

"Your symptoms appear to have abated."

"So you'd consider the prescription a success?"

The Doctor beams down at her. "Oh, yes."

He reaches out his hand and she accepts it, fingers lacing together with his. The Doctor feels something relax and settle somewhere in his chest, tension releasing its chokehold a tiny bit.

It feels strangely like…contentment. Like maybe he can be at ease, just for a little while. Even if this is all this thing between them ever amounts to; even if it never happens again.

Rose tugs at his hand, pulling him toward the door. "So? Where next? Are there are rules about—erm—physical activity after treatment?"

"Are you thinking about a certain crystalline pool, by chance?"

The door slides open for them with a hiss and Rose tugs the Doctor through, flashing him a tongue-touched smirk over her shoulder.

"Actually," she drawls, "I was thinking about scheduling a follow-up."

A slow grin spreads across the Doctor's face.

The door slides shut behind them.


	4. Epilogue: Follow-up

He feels fine. And he isn't totally certain of the point of all this.

"What is the point of all this?" the Doctor asks. "You do realize that a physical examination isn't at all necessary? I can still self-survey with nearly one hundred percent accuracy, half-human senses or no. And if anything was wrong with me, I'd tell you."

"No, you wouldn't," Rose argues softly. She's sitting next to him on the exam table, feet dangling over the floor several inches higher than his. She does not touch him. She very specifically does not hold his hand. Her own hands clasp together under his jacket, which folds neatly in her lap and drapes over her arms. She doesn't even look at him when she speaks.

The Doctor worries the inside of one cheek. He's human now, or at least this version of him is; for all that it's new and terrifying and not at all what he wanted, he supposes he should probably start acting like one. (If he pretends everything is normal, then eventually it will feel that way, right?)

"What, erm. What about you?" he ventures, fingers fidgeting nervously in his lap. "You didn't exactly have an easy time of it. Probably could use a check-up yourself. Are you all right?"

"I'm always all right." Rose sits up, glares at the clock mounted on the wall. "Isn't the doctor ever going to get here?"

The Doctor knows she's talking about a physician, _doctor_ with a lower-case "d", a Torchwood-appointed medical expert who will march in, take his vitals and his blood, order up a gene test, realize they've got something miraculous on their hands and order up all sorts of exciting and invasive procedures–he doesn't need his dwindling time-sense to know how these events will proceed–he _knows_ that this is the "doctor" she's referring to, and not another Time Lord a universe and a lifetime away. But he still flinches.

"Right," Rose says with a heavy sigh. "It's been twenty minutes. I'm calling it."

She pushes off the exam table, tossing his jacket over a chair, and stomps over to the cabinets lining the wall, opening drawers and doors and impatiently rifling through their contents. The Doctor watches her with a mounting sense of apprehension.

She's not…? She won't…? But…

"What are you doing?" he asks when she pulls a stethoscope out of the drawer and drapes it over her neck.

"I'll just do the exam myself," Rose replies, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. She pulls several other instruments out of the drawers, twenty-first devices that are so crude and basic that the Doctor has to stop himself from physically recoiling at the thought of them touching his skin. "I'm EMT-certified," Rose continues. "I can check your vitals and all that stuff, mark it off the chart. Just cover the basics so Torchwood can stop whinging about it and get your papers started."

When she catches the bewildered look on his face, she frowns. "What?" she snaps.

The Doctor shakes his head. "Nothing, I just…"

Rose plants her hands on her hips. She quirks an eyebrow. She's waiting for him to finish, but he can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound immeasurably stupid. As much as he does not want some stranger poking and prodding all over his fresh new half-human body, he can't stand the thought of Rose dealing with him in such a cold, clinical, impersonal manner. He's not sure which is worse.

"Do you think I can't do it?" she asks.

"No, no, that's not it at all. I have full faith in your capabilities. It's just that–"

"Cos it's been a hell of a few days, and I'm tired of waiting, and I'd really like to go home."

"Understandable, yes. But I'm not–"

"It isn't like it's more intimate than anything else we've done. This isn't exactly new for us."

The Doctor's tongue stills at the unspoken mention of intimacy, freezes at the sounds of _we_ and _us_. He chances a look up at her. She won't meet his gaze.

"Yeah, I said it," Rose grumps. "What are you gonna do about it?"

He blinks in the harsh white glare of the lamps overhead. His eyes are more sensitive to the light now; he'll have to keep that in mind. "I was sort of under the impression that there wasn't anything I could do about it," he says slowly. "It didn't seem like there was going to be a _we_ or an _us_ , if your comments in Norway were anything to go by."

Rose pulls a blood pressure cuff out of the drawer before she returns to the exam table. The cuff opens with a loud Velcro-toothed _rip_. "I don't know what you're talking about," Rose says, pulling the Doctor's arm out so she can wrap the cuff around his bicep. The cuff fastens snugly, perhaps just a few millimeters more snug than completely necessary, but the Doctor is not about to complain.

"But I will say," Rose continues, pumping up the cuff so that the pressure is uncomfortably tight, "that I worked really hard to get home, for a really long time, just to end up right back at square one. You can't really blame me for being upset about that, can you?"

His pulse–singular, lonely, and maddeningly unpredictable–thunders under the pressure cuff. When Rose plugs the stethoscope into her ears and presses the bell against his arm, he can only imagine the sound must be deafening. Discomfort and anxiety are going to wreak havoc on his new circulation system; that's another thing he'll have to keep in mind from now on.

"Can you really blame me for wanting to stay with you?" the Doctor asks once Rose has unplugged her ears, once she can't hear his heart racing anymore.

"125 over 83," Rose announces quietly, as if she hasn't heard him. The blood pressure cuff deflates and she unwraps it, deposits it on the counter with the rest of her pilfered medical equipment. "Could be pre-high blood pressure, could be nerves. You should keep an eye on it just in case."

"It's nerves," the Doctor says dismissively. "Though this body may have a slight tendency toward hypertension if I don't cut down on the sweets. Bloody inefficient human metabolism. But I mean what I said."

"I'm sure you do. You should probably start eating a salad every once in a while."

"Rose," the Doctor says, growing a bit testy.

"Doctor," Rose replies, and she doesn't seem testy at all. Just sort of…flat. She picks up an ophthalmoscope and clicks the light off and on, testing it; the Doctor tries not to think of how much the instrument reminds him of a sonic screwdriver several regenerations ago. Rose doubles back toward him and, with one hand pressed gently to the side of his head, she tilts his skull this way and that, shining the light of the scope in first one eye, then the other. It leaves little halos on the back of the Doctor's eyelids when he blinks.

Rose writes notes on a clipboard. She's been quiet for far too long. She should say something. Or he should. Someone should. The silence is suffocating.

"I know you're angry, and I understand as well as I can," the Doctor says, and he hates how much it sounds like a plea, and he knows he should drop it, but he doesn't. "I didn't exactly ask to be abandoned here either. Present company excluded, this universe has got absolutely nothing in it that I'm interested in. But it was the best decision for everyone. This might not be the world either of us were looking for, I might not be the Doctor you wanted, but it's light-years better than nothing, isn't it?"

He swallows and casts his eyes downward, cataloging the little hairs on the back of his hands. Manly hairs and manly hands and all of it the same as before, except for how it isn't. "And perhaps this is a bit selfish," he continues, "but don't I deserve even a little bit of happiness? In some incarnation or another?"

Rose ignores him. Something twists tight in his chest; he wonders if it's normal for human bodies to have such visceral responses to situations like this, to emotions left raw and bleeding out in the open. And it doesn't help that Rose is quiet and composed and betraying nothing of her own thoughts, a smaller, blonder, more female version of his Ninth self having traded out black leather for blue. This is not the Rose he knows; Rose from a few years ago would have shouted at him and given him what-for and stomped away and then bounded back the next morning with a smile and a hug. He does not know who this stony-faced and silent young woman is.

(Was he always this difficult to talk to?)

Rose swaps out one instrument for another, returning with an otoscope. But the Doctor can tell her she needn't worry, his otolaryngological health is excellent, and besides, he doesn't much fancy anyone looking about the insides of his ears. He stops her before she can raise the instrument, stalling her progress with his hand on hers.

"I should have asked what you wanted," he admits quietly. His single lonely heart batters against his ribs and his fingers go numb; it's very unpleasant and little wonder he rarely opens up like this. "The other me, I mean. I should have given you a choice. And I didn't. I'm sorry."

Rose says nothing, but something in her face seems to soften. She still won't look at him. He doesn't like that; he's the one who always has to look away, not her.

"Rose?" he tries again, dipping his head down to see if he can meet her gaze that way.

"The sooner we get through this, the sooner we can leave," she replies. "They'll want to know your basic stats–temperature, oral health, blood type, stuff like that. Then we can go."

"Is this the standard procedure for cataloging all your aliens?" the Doctor asks half-sarcastically; he is not comfortable with the idea of Torchwood knowing all of this _information_ about him.

"It's the standard procedure for anyone who works here. They keep it on hand in case they ever need to monitor you for symptoms of foreign contaminants."

"Am I working here, then?" he asks, wrinkling his nose.

"You've got to get a job someplace. You really want to work anywhere else?" Rose asks.

The Doctor considers. "37.2, nothing to report, type A. That good enough?"

Rose kneads her brow, knuckles flattening the wrinkles accumulated by a tension headache. "You're only making this harder."

" _You're_ making this harder," the Doctor echoes petulantly. Words are building up in the space behind his teeth and he can feel a faint shadow of Donna bursting to _chit-chat-chatter_ and release all these feelings bottled up inside, the ones that have been trapped in the silence between them ever since they arrived in this universe.

Drawing in a deep breath (rubbishy human cardiovascular system, he'll be forever filling his lungs), he watches Rose's face as she pulls out a digital thermometer, snapping on one of the covers, and he lets out another flood of words before she can get the instrument and its horrible plasticy smell anywhere close to his mouth. "I know we need to talk, there are things that should be said, emotions and details and all that rot to discuss, because that's what humans do, they just talk about everything and somehow that's supposed to make it better, but I don't know that works. I don't know how any of this works! Observation and theory and traveling with humans for 900-odd years are all very good and well, but there's no substitute for practice. So if things are going to get better, we need to talk about them, but why are you letting me do all the talking? You're the one who does all the talking. You're the one who knows the things that need to be said. I'm the one who's all–"

And here he sighs, gestures aimlessly with his hands, "–brooding and stoic."

She looks up at him then, their eyes making good, proper contact for the first time since Norway. "You're what now?" she asks, disbelieving.

"Brooding," the Doctor repeats. Rose's eyes widen; he's not sure why. "And stoic," he adds, a little disgruntled.

A laugh tries to escape her; he can see her choke down on it. "Yeah. A right anti-hero, that's you."

"That is me," he protests, and now Rose is making no effort to hide her chuckles. "What?" he demands, feeling himself flush with indignation as Rose shakes her head and her shoulders quake. "That's who I am!"

"Maybe a couple of you's ago," Rose giggles.

"All the me's," the Doctor insists, and in response, Rose just shakes her head again and leans in to press a hard kiss on his lips.

The Doctor feels the veneer of his frustration crack just a little bit. It is _astonishingly_ difficult to bluster at her when she does things like that. His cheeks flush and his pulse quickens and he wants to hold her–his hands raise and falter, unsure of where to go, uncertain of the boundaries with things the way they are right now–but the kiss ends as abruptly as it began. Rose pulls back with something like wonder in her eyes and the air in his lungs leaves with her.

She reaches up to his face, planting fingertips against his chin and cheek with a featherlight touch. "You're so warm," she murmurs.

He can still feel the ghost of her lips on his. "Vasodilation of the facial cutaneous blood supply," he says breathlessly. Rambling; that's one thing that hasn't changed. "Human bodies are terrible at thermoregulation. Or maybe this particular human body is just deeply flawed. Still got that bit with the dorsal tubercle, after all."

The Doctor flexes his wrist as if to prove a point, but although Rose smiles, her eyes are not drawn by the motion. "You're supposed to do that, though," she says. "The blushing bit. When someone kisses you, someone you fancy. That's supposed to happen."

"Never has before," the Doctor replies. "Not to this degree, anyway."

Rose nods. "That's sort of the point, isn't it?"

The Doctor's eyebrow arches in confusion. This conversation is happening on wavelengths invisible to him. Quite unusually, he has no idea what's going on. But a well-timed hug solves a lot of problems, he's found, so he leans forward and draws Rose in by the waist, folding his arms around her. She surrenders easily, standing between his legs, her hands trapped between the two of them, pressed between their stomachs like flowers in the pages of a book. The pressure of her warmth and curves and softness pings on his fresh nerves, sending all sorts of brilliant thoughts through his head that will have to be dealt with later. Rose buries her face in the crook of his neck; her hair smells faintly of her old shampoo, the same in any reality, and of something sooty and metallic on top. Dimension jumps and burning Dalek ships and this must have all been terribly hard on her, he realizes, much worse than he could know. His arms tighten around her.

He cinches his arms around her as tight as he can, smiles when he feels her do the same in response, her fingers curling in his tee-shirt. Gods, he'd forgotten how good this felt, just hugging her. How does she _do_ that?

Rose's hand wanders up to his chest, and she splays her fingers across the bottom of his ribcage now. Her touch is tentative, like she's afraid she'll scare him off. Her palm presses against him and she's feeling his heartbeat, he thinks, just like she did on the beach a few hours ago. His pulse hammers in his chest and he's sure Rose can feel it, certain that she knows it's because of her.

"See, s'different," she breathes. "You're different."

"Not so different," he argues softly.

Rose shakes her head. "It's not a bad thing. You seem–I dunno. It's like the walls have started to crumble a little bit, or something."

He doesn't really care for the sound of that–useful things, walls, good for keeping things out or worse things in. "Yes, I deeply admire the loss of control I will experience in this body," he drawls sarcastically. "It's such a handy evolutionary quirk, being unable to choose your core temperature or the finer points of your metabolism or the way your body responds to external stimuli. Incredibly satisfying, can't imagine why I didn't try it sooner.

"Besides, even if I had a better rein on it, I did technically do all this before," the Doctor continues. "With the blushing, and the hearts-racing, and the autonomic nervous system causing nitric oxide levels to rise in the trabecular arteries of certain tissues."

"Yeah, but you had to make all that happen, or let it happen, or whatever. It was never like this, was it? At the end of the day, you were always in control."

The Doctor hesitates. Time Lord physiology is a little more complicated than that, but she's not wrong. And he suspects she's not just talking about his new body, either.

"Suppose neither of us asked to be here like this," he offers. "I'm sorry things didn't turn out the way you hoped."

Rose shrugs. "I made my choice."

It takes a moment for the words to soak in.

Meaning seeps in through the cracks and bleeds through to the other side. When the message finally reaches his brain, the Doctor's breath catches in his throat, an unpleasant reminder that his respiratory bypass is gone. His mouth falls just a little open and he gapes at Rose, a question hovering at the edge of his tongue.

"Think about it," Rose mutters, laughing under her breath, and the Doctor watches as tears pearl in the corners of her eyes, "Who would you rather be with–someone who pulls you in close, or the person who will never stop pushing you away?"

"Right," the Doctor nods as pieces fall together in place. There's a curious feeling like something expanding in his chest, not enough to be alarming, just enough to make him grin like an idiot.

(He knows he should feel bad about the other Doctor alone and depressed in another universe, and in a distant way, he does–but in a closer, much more present way, he's starting to feel ridiculously giddy and just the tiniest bit hopeful.)

But…

"…just to confirm, 'pull you in close' is the proper answer, yes?" he asks.

Rose rolls her eyes. "Yes, you daft git," barely makes it out of her mouth before the Doctor pulls her back into another hug.

(In this body or any other, he'll take "daft git" over "sweetheart" any day.)

Shifting back just a few inches, he grasps Rose by the chin and kisses her properly, the way he feels she should always be kissed, firm pressure and mouths pushing open and hands holding her close in just the smallest hint of desperation. It's unseemly, he knows, and maybe just a little embarrassing, how much he craves Rose's physical reassurance, the comfort of their bodies colliding together and the feel of her lips on his. He was always a bit touchy before, but this–the almost electric buzz between them, the way his head rushes and floods with neurochemicals that leave him feeling intoxicated, how his body now matches hers for warmth, flushing everywhere she's making contact with his new and oversensitive skin–this is something else entirely.

Although he doesn't particularly care for it when he is the one that has to break the kiss for the sake of breathing now, because _damn these inefficient lungs_.

"I can't stop thinking I'm betraying him somehow," Rose says quietly while the two of them catch their breath.

"You're not," the Doctor says firmly. "You chose to stay. He chose to go."

"I'm still gonna miss him, though," Rose admits. She doesn't meet his eyes when she says it. "You know. The other you. Even if he is a giant prat."

A tiny and petty flare of jealousy surges through him. He stamps it down, hard, buries it deep where it belongs. "I'm all right with that," he replies.

Rose smiles at him, that tongue-touched grin he remembers so well. "Liar," she says, and she doesn't give him a chance to defend himself before she's leaning in again, pressing another kiss to his mouth. And this, finally, this is the Rose he remembers, acting just the way his memory has outlined for him in painstaking detail: drawing her body flush against his, her fingers tangling in his hair. Some selfish part of him tucked deep and away is secretly quite pleased that he can still have this effect on her after all this time apart. ( _Still got it_ he remembers from a lifetime ago, and his lips curve up in a smile.) He is especially pleased, and just might let out the smallest half-murmur himself, when Rose's fingernails scrape lightly against the base of his skull. It sends a shiver down his spine. Unwanted half-humanity or not, he's suddenly very, very grateful that he's the bastard lucky enough to be stranded here.

He only halts their progress because she stops moving against him.

"We should stop," he realizes, breathing into the hollow of her neck.

"We should," Rose nods. "We should be responsible."

"We haven't seen each other for a long time."

"It'd be good to take things slow," Rose breathes, her fingers tangling in his shirt.

"Yes, it would," he agrees, kissing the spot on her throat that he knows will make her shudder. (She does.)

"We're both different people now."

"True, very true, very literally true in some senses."

"We're not 100% certain where we stand."

"Well, you're standing right there," the Doctor points out.

Rose laughs and he thinks it might be the best thing he's ever heard and he says a silent thank-you with a kiss, pressing his lips firmly to hers until he can feel her practically melting in his arms. And even though he misses the TARDIS like he misses his second heart, even if some part of him in the background is still reeling from everything he's lost in coming over to this new world–even if he'll never fully recover from it, not really–with his lips pressed to her pulse point, in the soft space beneath her ear, he can feel that her heart is pounding every bit as hard as his, and he thinks humanity might not be quite so terrible after all, if he gets to share it with her.

At least, until he hears the door open on the other side of the room, and remembers most twenty-first-century human attitudes about public sexual displays.

"Sorry about the wait," a female voice announces as the door pushes open. "We're sort of in the middle of a crisis upstairs, something about killer mold–"

Rose pushes the Doctor away and the physician stops walking and talking and starts staring instead, at the Doctor with his flushed face and Rose with her smeared lipgloss and both of them with their hands in each other's clothes. The physician's mouth opens and closes a few times. She blinks.

"Erm–"

"Physical exam," Rose blurts out. The physician raises an eyebrow in query and Rose hurriedly follows with, "Just finishing the physical exam."

"For Torchwood," the Doctor supplies helpfully, flattening his hair where Rose's fingers have mussed it.

"For Torchwood's medical records," Rose adds.

"And to test this body's automatic responses to environmental stimuli. They're quite satisfactory."

"Anyway," Rose says loudly, and the Doctor watches as the back of her neck flushes a peculiar shade of pink, "You've got everything you need there–" she gestures to the clipboard, neglected on the counter, "–so we'll just be on our way."

Before the physician or the Doctor have a chance to say anything else, Rose grabs the Doctor's hand, drags him off the exam table, and hauls him out the door. He barely has a chance to snatch up his jacket before they're gone.

But then…

"Wait a minute," the Doctor says, popping his head back through the doorframe. "Did you say something about 'killer mold'?"

Later, after a crisis is narrowly avoided and a day saved just by the skin of its teeth, they go home. They wash up and pull on jimjams. They resolve to stay in separate rooms for the night. They resolve to play it safe, and give each other time, and space.

Their resolve lasts about two hours.


End file.
